ven•a•tic: fond of or living by hunting
NORTH AMERICA’S MOST-READ OUTDOOR NEWSLETTER
As we continue to slowly but surely inch back towards the weekend, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get into what this beautiful Tuesday has to offer.
Here's what's worth reading about so far this week:
Case closed - The final defendant has been sentenced in Wisconsin raccoon and deer poaching case 🧑⚖️
Burglars busted - Wyoming deputies catch up with group of juveniles who have been robbing hunting camps in Medicine Bow 🙇
Silenced - ATF will no longer enforce federal NFA approval for suppressors 🤫
Whoopsie - Montana law unintentionally lets 1,100 extra nonresidents hunt deer on public land 🦌
Not picky - The moment you find yourself between a rabid raccoon and a hungry gator 🐊
HOPING THESE YOUNG MEN TURN IT AROUND
LAST OF THREE WISCONSIN TEENS SENTENCED IN MONTHS-LONG DEER AND RACCOON POACHING CASE
In what took about ten months to come to fruition, the last defendant in a central Wisconsin poaching case has been sentenced. The final domino fell yesterday in Waupaca County Court when 18-year-old Landan W. Fuhs of Scandinavia entered a no contest plea to one misdemeanor count of illegal hunting of a deer as a party to a crime. As part of a deal, the other counts he faced, including hunting deer during closed season and illegal shining of deer, were dismissed but read into the record.
This final appearance closes out the criminal cases against three Wisconsin teens first charged early in December of last year. Fuhs, then 17, along with 18-year-olds Ian W. Johnson of Amherst and Ethan L. Lashua of Iola, faced misdemeanor charges after a Wisconsin DNR investigation uncovered a rash of illegal hunting activity spread across the spring, summer and early fall of 2025…
HEADLINES // DIGESTIBLE SNIPPETS
👮 Wyoming Deputies Bust Juvenile Ring Behind Years of Hunting Camp Thefts. A ring of juvenile suspects believed to have been responsible for a series of hunting camp thefts in southwest Wyoming have been busted. Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken said the group is believed to have been targeting hunting camps on the Medicine Bow National Forest for several years and has tied them to a number of incidents that recently took place between September 15th and October 1st of this year.
The case broke wide open when deputies spotted and stopped a vehicle seen near burglarized camps. After interviewing the occupants of the vehicle, they were able to link the car full of juveniles to the thefts. The suspects were issued criminal summons and released to their parents, as authorities recovered multiple stolen items, including a firearm, a generator, and a chainsaw.
Local hunters who use the area noted that camp thefts have long been a frustration, with some saying they have taken steps like using trail cameras, lock boxes, and concealed “trap” cameras to protect gear. One hunter described recovering her own stolen property years earlier by confronting the suspects directly, and expressed relief that the sheriff’s office made arrests this time. The sheriff’s office is encouraging anyone missing items from camps in the area to contact them, as the recovered property and the multi-year pattern suggest additional victims may still be unidentified.
🤫 ATF Says It Will No Longer Enforce Federal NFA Approval for Suppressors. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced last week that it will not enforce longstanding federal requirements for suppressor transfers under the National Firearms Act. Following a Texas court ruling in August that effectively deregulated suppressors for some owners, the ATF is now applying that approach nationwide for anyone otherwise qualified to buy a regular firearm. Under the new guidance, a Form 4 and tax stamp are no longer required for federal suppressor transfers, meaning buyers can instead use a standard Form 4473 for same-day, over-the-counter purchases, the same process used for ordinary firearms.
The agency will, however, continue processing Form 4 applications because 15 states still require federal NFA approval under their own laws.
🦌 Montana Law Unintentionally Lets 1,100 Extra Nonresidents Hunt Deer on Public Land. A trio of complex Montana statutes that was originally designed to steer certain nonresident deer licenses onto private property are instead allowing roughly 1,100 additional out-of-state hunters to pursue deer on public land this season. The issue stems from the interplay between landowner-sponsored deer combination licenses (which are reserved for nonresidents who must hunt only on the sponsoring landowner’s deeded ground) and the broader nonresident combination license system. When landowner-sponsored licenses go unclaimed, or when “orphaned” deer licenses arise from the way big-game and elk combination quotas are structured, those tags have been folded into the general nonresident deer combination pool.
The result is more nonresident deer hunters on public land than the private-land restriction was designed to produce. This comes amid ongoing concern in the state of Montana about rising nonresident hunting pressure, declining mule deer numbers in some areas, and a recent Fish and Wildlife Commission decision to cut other nonresident deer tags by about 2,500 for the 2026–27 seasons.
THOUGHTS FROM THE STAND // FROM OUR NOTEPAD
It is immoral to withhold a compliment. If someone is doing or has done something amazing, you owe the world to tell them.
The only way to be satisfied with an extraordinary future, which will itself become the everyday, is to be extraordinarily satisfied with the everyday. (Alaimo)
Sometimes you’ve got to make fiction out of the mess that fact creates.
Time slips through scrolling fingers.
He gives weight to the men he has not forgotten 🙏
VIDEO // SOME THINGS JUST HAVE TO BE SEEN
🦝 That moment you find yourself between a rabid raccoon and a hungry gator. As you can see, this raccoon is sickly to say the least. My guess is this gator had his eyes on him for a few days and finally just decided to saunter up to him and get it done.
It’s honestly probably the best way it could have ended…
WANDERINGS // A SFW GLIMPSE OF OUR BROWSER HISTORY
An old buddy of mine’s son is an amateur wrestler and he’ll tell you the same as this will, the only thing fake about about these fights are the outcomes of the matches. Can carnivorous plants actually eat people? Boomer Halloween candy, ranked. And the meaning of the Finnish word Sisu, which has no direct translation, but refers to the idea of continuing to act even in the face of repeated failures and extreme odds. Sounds like the story of my life.
EYE CANDY // PICTURES > WORDS
Me and the wife and kids butting heads trying to figure out where to go for dinner.
📸 by Carlo Wiese
Oh, and one more thing…
